More than 300 ADF per­son­nel par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mis­sion, pro­vid­ing health and den­tal care as well as com­plet­ing 22 engi­neer­ing projects such as school build­ing restora­tion and drilling and devel­op­ing water wells across five coun­tries over four months.

Unit­ed States Navy Cap­tain Lisa Franchet­ti, PP10 Mis­sion Com­man­der com­mend­ed the ADF’s con­tri­bu­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly HMAS Tobruk who was the first Roy­al Aus­tralian Navy ship to act as Com­mand plat­form dur­ing the last leg of the mis­sion to Papua New Guinea.

“It was such a unique expe­ri­ence to con­duct the Mis­sion from a ship oth­er than a Unit­ed States Navy ves­sel. The Papua New Guinea mis­sion was a huge suc­cess and I am in no doubt that the rea­son for that lies with the crew of HMAS Tobruk — their com­mit­ment and hos­pi­tal­i­ty was unwa­ver­ing,” Cap­tain Franchet­ti said

Med­ical and Den­tal per­son­nel from all three ser­vices pro­vid­ed health care to patients at med­ical clin­ics and surg­eries onboard USNS Mer­cy whilst also par­tic­i­pat­ing in sub­ject mat­ter expert exchanges and health edu­ca­tion pro­grams.

More than 35 engi­neers from Sec­ond Com­bat Engi­neer Reg­i­ment worked with Unit­ed States Seabees and host nation per­son­nel in Viet­nam, Cam­bo­dia, Indone­sia, East Tim­or and Papua New Guinea.

Dur­ing the two pre­vi­ous phas­es of PP10, HMA Ships Labuan and Tarakan pro­vid­ed logis­tic sup­port in Indone­sia and East Tim­or and played host to med­ical, den­tal and vet­eri­nary teams in the more remote loca­tions.

Chief of Joint Oper­a­tions Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Mark Evans said the reward for the ADF par­tic­i­pat­ing in this mis­sion was two-fold.

“Work­ing with a large inter­na­tion­al team in a com­plex envi­ron­ment enhanced the pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships that have become so impor­tant in large scale human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance efforts, as we are cur­rent­ly see­ing in Pak­istan,” he said.

“The chance to under­take a mul­ti-coun­try human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance endeav­our with var­i­ous mil­i­tary and non-gov­ern­ment per­son­nel on a reg­u­lar basis also assures a lev­el of pre­pared­ness for any dis­as­ter relief even­tu­al­i­ty,” Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Evans said.

In Papua New Guinea, ADF per­son­nel treat­ed 6,500 patients and com­plet­ed three engi­neer­ing projects in the areas of Rabaul and Kokopo in East New Britain.